Reflection for Week of August 25th

Let me start off this week’s post by asking a question. In class on Friday, the word privatization was brought up when referring to basic services. While in theory I don’t disagree with privatizing services, if the private company cannot provide the service isn’t it the local or perhaps the state governments’ responsibility to provide these services for their people? In theory, I agree with the privatization of services, because I don’t believe that the government should have a real far reach into the free enterprise sector. This question brings up the difficult question of how far reaching the government should be. I don’t have an answer to the question, but I just wanted to put it out there.

Relating to today’s class discussion about “What constitutes world politics?”, I wanted to reiterate my points. First off, I believe there is a certain threshold before an issue becomes world politics. That threshold, in my belief, must involve an issue that transcends (crosses), literally or figuratively, a state border. Second, even little things in one country, such as the inability to provide basic services can become a world politics issue. Let’s use an example from class, Palestine. The Palestinians elected the militant group Hamas, because the ruling party, Fata, couldn’t provide basic services such as electricity. The electing of a new government, in and of itself is not a world politics issue, but, because Hamas is hostile to the neighboring state of Israel it has world impact. So because Palestine is controlled by Hamas, it now has more opportunity to send missiles and suicide bombers into Israel, and there is nothing in their own country that would stop them. My third and final point is that I believe that any issue should be considered individually to see if it constitutes a world political issue, because almost anything can morph into a global political issue.